Court documents paint a picture of a remote coastal B.C. village racked by horror and confusion in the hours after the discovery, in 1983, of a murdered child.

In the early morning of April 23, 1983, 17-year-old Phillip James Tallio found his 22-month-old cousin not breathing, and sprinted in a grief-stricken panic to wake up family members and relay the terrible news. That’s the account he has been telling for the past three decades.

Within three hours of that morning’s discovery in the First Nations community of Bella Coola, RCMP officers picked up Tallio for questioning, and by day’s end, he had been charged with the murder of young Delavina Mack. Tallio pleaded guilty to the murder at his trial later that year, but ever since being sentenced in 1984 to life imprisonment, he asserts he has maintained his innocence. Now, Tallio is mounting an appeal.

A series of affidavits, filed with the court registry in connection with his application to appeal, suggest Tallio’s lawyers may try to introduce into evidence a timeline of the hours before and after the young girl was found dead.

The former RCMP detachment building in Bella Coola where Tallio was held for questioning. It now contains tourism and business offices.bellacoola.ca

The night before, several community members including Tallio’s relatives had been drinking at a house party on the reserve, according to media reports at the time and recently filed affidavits. Having been asked to check on his young cousin at a relative’s house, Tallio says he rose early the morning after the party and went to the house, found her lifeless body, and ran back to his uncle and aunt’s home to wake them and tell them what he had found.

Phillip James Tallio as a teenager in the early 1980s.Tallio Family /
PNG

Several Bella Coola residents asserted, in a series of sworn affidavits filed with the court registry, that they saw Tallio walk to the home where Delavina had been sleeping, at around 5:45 a.m. that day. Tallio and another witness swore affidavits saying he had been asked to check on the toddler. But lawyers for the Ministry of Justice, in their argument filed last month opposing Tallio’s appeal, said that explanation was not credible, adding: “If there actually had been requests for him to go and check on the child, the time to do so had passed.”

Tallio appeared calm as he walked to the house, according to witness affidavits, but as he ran back soon after, he looked “scared” and “panicked.” The amount of time witnesses estimated Tallio spent at the house varied from two minutes to “less than 10,” and affidavits describe Tallio’s efforts to alert others soon after the horrible discovery.

Some affidavits describe strange behaviour around the community later in the day, while Tallio was at the RCMP detachment. Several affidavits include descriptions of community members burning clothes and other items in the hours after Delavina’s body was discovered. One neighbour said she heard about people carrying things from the house where Delavina’s body was discovered and burning them, and when she went to investigate, saw burnt bedsheets and a doll in the smouldering remnants of a fire.

The timing of the fire struck community members as strange: When someone dies, it is a Nuxalk tradition to burn some of their personal belongings but, according to affidavits, the burning traditionally takes place on the fourth day after the person’s death — not in the hours immediately afterwards.

None of the information in the affidavits has been admitted as evidence, and much of it was relayed second-hand to the people who swore the affidavits. But it suggests Tallio’s lawyers may try to raise the possibility that another community member should have been a suspect.

Dr. Raymond McIlwain was on call at the Bella Coola General Hospital on the day the child was found dead, and he was called to the RCMP detachment twice to assist. The victim appeared to have been sexually assaulted, and a constable told McIlwain he was “interested in physical evidence that would indicate involvement by Phillip in the rape,” according to the doctor’s affidavit.

Dr. Ray McIlwain at the Bella Coola airport in 2004. In 1983, he was called in by police to examine Phillip Tallio.Michael Wigle

McIlwain told Tallio he was looking for blood — evidence that could be used against him in court. The doctor examined Tallio, and reported finding no scratches on his skin, blood or debris under his nails, or blood around his genital area.

“I felt badly during the examination, thinking that Phillip did not have a clue what was going on,” McIlwain said in his affidavit. “I thought that he should have had legal advice. He was certainly on his own.”

Meanwhile, members of Tallio’s family had been trying to speak to the teenager but, according to their affidavits, police refused to allow them into the detachment’s reception area.

Tallio’s aunt Darlene Tallio and his grandmother Alice King were among those trying to see Tallio, but when they arrived, “the police officer refused to open the door to the station more than just a crack,” Darlene said in her affidavit. “He told me that no one was allowed to see Phillip until the police got a confession from him, and that only a lawyer could contact him.”

So the family tried to find a lawyer. Eventually they reached Leslie Pinder, a Vancouver lawyer whom Bella Coola’s community leaders knew through her work with the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. She was one of two lawyers who tried that day to speak with Tallio, but were rebuffed by police at the Bella Coola detachment.

Pinder phoned the detachment three times that day, explaining she had been retained by Tallio’s family to act as his lawyer and asking to speak the young man in custody to advise him of his legal rights. Three times, she was denied permission to speak with Tallio.

“I was frustrated,” Pinder swore in an affidavit in 2012 that was filed with the court registry in connection with Tallio’s application to extend the time for him to appeal. “The fact that I could not communicate with Phillip was of deep concern to me.”

After more than 10 hours of detention and interrogation by at least two police officers, Tallio signed a confession. But that signed statement — and the question of whether or not Tallio gave it voluntarily — would become a major point of contention at the young man’s murder trial later that year.

Around 11 p.m., Tallio’s aunt and grandmother were allowed to see him for about 15 minutes. A minister from the United Church was present, at Tallio’s request, according to Darlene’s affidavit, which also said: “When my mother and I approached his cell, Phillip was lying on the cell bed in a fetal position. When he heard my mother’s voice, he got up right away. He looked at my mom and said, ‘I swear to God, Gran, I didn’t do it.’”

But, as outlined in documents filed last month by Crown lawyers opposing Tallio’s wrongful conviction claim, the young man may have told other people a different story.

This seven-part series on the life and murder trial of Phillip Tallio is based on information taken from hundreds of pages of recently released court documents and interviews by Postmedia reporters Dan Fumano and Matt Robinson.

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